Report: The Future of Work in America: Policies to Empower American Workers and Secure Prosperity for All

The Future of Work is bringing together thought and action leaders from multiple fields to re-imagine a 21st century social contract that expands workers’ rights and increases the number of living wage jobs. The Future of Work is focusing on three areas: promoting new and innovative strategies for worker organizing and representation; raising the floor of labor market standards and strengthening enforcement of labor laws and standards; and assuring access to good jobs for women and workers of color.

Under the sponsorship of the Roosevelt Institute, the Future of Work is a collaboration between the Roosevelt Institute and the Columbia Program on Labor Law and Policy. The project is organizing a series of meetings, policy papers, and a conference, that aim at generating, debating, and communicating multiple approaches to empowering American workers to build an economy of broadly shared prosperity.

This report, Policies to Empower American Workers and Secure Prosperity for All, is an introduction to the first area: policies to invigorate worker organizing. The report is in four parts:

A history of how organized workers fueled America’s broadly shared prosperity;

A history of how the weakening of American labor led to the shrinking of America’s middle class;